Shah Mat
by K. A. Pryde
Summary: A handful of very different characters across the same dangerous and poverty-stricken region of Aerei edge ever closer to the Championships, either on purpose or by accident, and at the same time inadvertently towards an apparently patternless murderer and a sinister cult. And, perhaps one day, towards each other.
1. Fletch I

**Fletch I**

The Starling City squat smelled like a mixture of sweat, urine and stale cigarettes. It was the sweat in that unpleasant concoction that stood out the most. Anyone who entered the door – and this included maybe six people – were immediately hit by the raw concentrated body odour, but since none of them really ever left, they were accustomed to it. To these few, old humid sweat was synonymous to their senses with home.

This is why when Fletch arose to squeeze out his dehydrated morning urination, he was struck by a change in the delicate microcosm of their carefully cultivated cesspit.

His apartment stank of rotting meat.

None of the squatters ate meat. It was a luxury that they couldn't afford; often misinterpreted by the rare outsider as a statement against cruelty to livestock pokemon. Their diet consisted of tobacco and stale bread. Fletch felt less than a day away from scurvy. He didn't know what that felt like, but he felt that he just knew it. The smell, alien and offensive, permeated through the malnourishment fug and burrowed through to pique curiosity in his semi-dormant brain.

One hand hovering still over his boxers and the other scraping something crusted out of his nostril, Fletch stumbled over the sleeping form of his perplexingly chubby Raichu, and towards an unfamiliar silhouette on his dirty, curb-rescued sofa.

Could it possibly be Davey? he wondered, back from his bender finally and stinking up his flat? But no, the figure was stunted and disproportionate for a human. A low, sporadic hum emitted from the stench's source, and Flech swatted away flies as he squinted.

The smell worsened as he got closer, but that was to be expected. He threw open the curtain with unsteady hand and the grey afternoon light spilled onto the dead body on his sofa.

A Typhlosion, mouth agape, one eye shut and the other open, wide and glassy. Dug beneath its collarbone was a yawning gap exposing shining bone and torn red meat. Fletch fancied for a moment that he caught a glimpse of flame sac, but his days of anatomical assuredness were long gone. The flesh opening was jagged; rough. It was definitely a tear and not a slice. No actual damage to innards so the creature had probably bled out. And not here as there was no fresh blood around the sofa.

All of this information came to him before the fear. He was suddenly very aware of his heart thudding a reminder of his own life as he stared at this dead strange pokemon in his home.

Why had this happened?

_How _had this happened?

Granted it didn't require any sort of infiltration experts to sneak past the doped up conked out current habitants of the flat, but to dump a dead body on his sofa in broad daylight?

He could actually feel the fog of months of intoxicants lifting as his mind whirred. Was it possible that somebody had intended to send him a message? This had been in that film, hadn't it? Where the guy found a Rapidash head in his bed. But who wanted him dead, and why? In the background the TV hummed to a different tune than the flies. RJ was rallying the masses once again. 'Pokemon training is CRUEL,' Fletch heard her roar, and the force in her convictions travelled even through the staticky set and made him quiver. 'Why are bloodbaths still considered okay in our modern society?' Fletch found himself reaching out to the dead Typhlosion and then flinching back.

This had to be a message. If it were a sign, the meaning was clear enough.

We're coming for you.

He made up for whatever time he had wasted in his shock in the next few minutes. He packed a meagre backpack, scooped up Cheddar, the fat Raichu, and after downing the dregs from an open can and wincing at the ashy taste, he squeezed through the front door and was out of the squat for the first time in several weeks.

Standing on a street corner in only boxers and a hideously tight band t-shirt, forearm hiding his eyes from the minimal sunlight and a dozing Raichu, he must have been quite a sight. Nobody in the city gave him so much as a second glance. Addison Fletcher stumbled over bin bags and a Trubbish and began his pilgrimage towards his new life for the second time in as many years.


	2. Ray I

**Ray I**

As his hands fumbled over the lopsided bow for the third minute, the boy exuded nothing but positivity. He noticed, barely, his mother open and shut her mouth a few times and suck in air as if she had something to say but thought better of it. It was his first ever real birthday present – bought with money and wrapped in wrapping paper and given to him on the day – and the excitement was causing his already near-inept, trembling hands to struggle greatly with the act of untying the blue ribbon.

"Just let me do it, Ray."

He almost jumped when his mother's words came; he hadn't expected her to actually say anything.

He shook his head so rapidly that he could have sworn he heard his brain knocking about in his skull.

"Let's have some cake first, darling, and then we'll give it another go, alright?"

Her thin lips turned upwards at the corners. It was a strange look for her, reserved for just two days of the year. His birthday and on Christmas, that was it. Those were also the only two days that pokemon battling wasn't on the telvision. It was all she watched. Ray was lucky to get meals when the Championships were on.

Ray craned his neck backwards to steal another look at the cake that she had for him, his fingers still trembling gently against the wrapped box.

"Come on, darling," his mother coaxed, lifting up the hem of her nightgown to step across the room and pick up a knife. She muttered to herself as she let it glide downwards through the cake. "I shouldn't have wrapped your present."

A slice was placed on the table. Even on his birthday he wouldn't be allowed to eat it on the floor. Other children he knew could eat in front of the television if they wanted. His mother told him that this was their parents' decision. If they wanted to raise offspring with no manners or sense of family time then that was their business.

Ray took his present with him to the table, placing it next to him as he ate. The sugary, creamy icing spread thick across his unfamiliar palette and he felt at first as though he would be sick.

It was a Treat, though, and if he didn't enjoy it he was sure that his mother would be unhappy.

And the woman only smiled twice a year as it was.

He smiled as he ate it, and felt his cheeks aching with it. He wiped icing from his chin and licked it. Other children liked butterscotch and pure sugarcane, but he wasn't used to it. Sometimes he would get a square of dark chocolate after dinner, and he didn't mind that, really, but that was a fairly rare Treat, usually after Mr. Park had been to visit. Mr. Park liked dark chocolate and black liquorice. His mother had told him once that nobody liked black liquorice and Mr. Park was only trying to adopt a character trait because he had none of his own. Ray had nodded in understanding, but his mother had laughed and poked at his ribs, saying that of course she was only joking and why was he so serious?

He'd apologised and gone to his room to play with Sunny.

Sunny was a stuffed Minccino that his father had given him before he was born. Ray worried sometimes that he would not have been able to properly thank his father _in utero_, which according to his mother meant between the time you were planted and the time you were born. He wondered whether his father knew that he was grateful, wherever he was. He made it a point to play with Sunny every day to show the Universe that he was grateful.

His mother said that the Universe was very powerful. Do good things for the Universe and the Universe would make sure good things happened to you. She also talked about the Cosmos and how if you put good thoughts into the Cosmos, the Cosmos would deliver you good things. Ray asked her once how the Cosmos and the Universe were different, and his mother had thought for a while until her lips had just about disappeared, and then answered, 'I suppose they aren't really.'

Today was his tenth birthday, and his mother had fashioned a little felt number '10' and put it between Sunny's paws and put a party hat on his head and positioned him next to the cake. When he had finished his slice, his mother offered him another one that he politely refused.

"Would you like me to loosen the bow, darling?"

Her hands were clasped tightly over the off-white nightdress, but her voice was calm.

Ray wondered if it would annoy her more to have to undo the bow she'd done up by herself, or to sit and watch him struggle for however long it took.

"Please could you just loosen it a very tiny bit?" he asked her, and her eyes flicked upwards.

"Of course."

Nimbly her fingers flicked the two tails of the bow outwards. Ray pressed his finger and thumb against each other once to practice on his lap, and then on the same strings that his mother had just pulled on. Shakingly, taking great care to not let go but also to not squeeze too hard and hurt himself more than necessary, he pulled outwards, elbows creaking almost audibly to him, but probably silent to his mother.

The bow was sucked inwards into itself and then the ribbon peeled away, leaving just the box. All he had to do was curl his fingers around the lid and pull it off of the box.

"If you need any more help, darling-"

His mother didn't ever end that sentence. She didn't need to, really; she said it all the time.

But he got it right the first time and managed to push the lid off from below right away. Inside was a pretty mess of ripped moss-green tissue paper: his favourite colour ever since he discovered the talking tree. The talking tree wasn't a tree that spoke, by the way; it had inherited its name for different reasons many years ago, but that wasn't important right now.

What was important was the hard, round and very shiny red object in the box that he could immediately feel against his fingertips when he sifted through the tissue. He scooped it up with both of his palms and gaped at it for a while.

Pokeballs were heavier than he had expected.

"Do you … do I catch something in it?"

He knew the answer to that, but he had to say something about its purpose before the flood of 'thank you's spilled forth.

"No – why don't you try to open it up?"

That answer confused him momentarily. Was it a prop pokeball? Maybe it had sweets in it.

He hoped not.

But when he pressed the button and an orange blob of energy shone out and began to shape, his mouth fell open.

"You got me an actual-?"

He couldn't bring himself to say the word. Would it jinx it? His mother's smile deepened and for a moment she didn't look at all frightening or unfamiliar wearing it any more.

The energy formed into a shape that he knew better than anything else in the world.

"Cinchii-!"

Ray's eyes flicked from Sunny in its party hat holding the felt number '10' on the table to the small, expressive rodent beside it. There were a shocking number of differences between the real thing and the fluffy cotton counterpart, but in essence they were the same thing.

His mother had gone out and bought him a real life Minccino.

"Mu-" he began.

"I know, darling. Please, you don't have to say anything."

"How did you afford it?"

The rude words came out before he could stop himself. His trembling fingers were zoning in ever closer to the creature on the table, and the Minccino was noticeably frightened. Its eyes were closer together than the stuffed animal. Ray could see muscle and bone shift as it moved under the coat of short grey fur. Instead of a huge stretching grin, the real thing had a small snout with small, practical-looking fangs glinting from inside its half-open mouth. Its eyes, darker and smaller than Sunny's, were darting, uncertain.

"I don't want you to worry about that."

"It's scared."

"_It's_ a _he_, and he probably wonders what you're going to name him."

"Is that something to be frightened of?" Ray wondered aloud.

His eyes shot immediately to Sunny. He couldn't have a Minccino around him that was called anything else. He'd had a Minccino named Sunny since before he was born.

"Sunny," he said finally, hoping his mother wouldn't laugh at him, and adding "…please."

"Anything you want, darling. Anything at all."

Ray didn't know if that meant that Sunny wasn't allowed. He kept quiet for a bit.

"Go play with him, darling."

The creature shook at the words, looking up at both of them in turn, its paws tucked up to its chest.

"Go on."

Ray tried to pick up the pokeball a few times, but it fell out of his grasp and clattered on the table when he finally got it. The Minccino scrambled away from the loud noise and skittered to a halt before it fell off the edge, its chest rising and falling rapidly and its head darting side to side.

"Sweetie, just use both of your hands."

His mother wiped her hands on the side of her off-white nightdress and demonstrated. Ray copied, cupping the ball and simultaneously pressing the button. The Minccino was sucked back inside with a sort of defeated look on its face.

He was barely out of the room when he heard the familiar 'zoop' noise of the TV being turned back on. His mother switched channels a few times before settling into her seat on the sofa as a referee announced a battle. Ray recognised the battle. It was a rerun. The current champion versus one of the Elite Four. It was an amazing battle to watch, so it was on very often, whenever there was nothing better to show. He estimated that his mother had seen it over forty times, at least.

"Now you have your very own pokemon, you can get training."

Ray jumped when he realised that his mother was talking to him despite the TV being on.

"You can bring me back the Championship trophy. Won't that be nice, darling?"

She didn't require an answer, he guessed. Taking great care not to drop the pokeball in his trembling hands, Ray ducked out of the room just as on-screen an Aggron and Blastoise grappled, roaring so hard the set buzzed. The crowd roared.

"Ok, mum," he said, but he was sure that she hadn't heard.


	3. Raksha I

**Raksha I**

"Battling is needless bloodshed!"

The crowd that had formed around her were screaming their support and their opposition with equal force.

"Murder! Slavery! Exploitation!"

Her voice, magnified, reached right to the back of the heaving masses before her. Signs swayed throughout, some glittery, some humorously punny, some nonsensically violent.

"Isn't there a time when cleverer men than we would call the forcing of others to do what they didn't want to do … close to _rape_?"

That received one hell of a shocked and outraged cheer. The word always did.

She hoped that the cameras were capturing her good side. One hand instinctively came up to the clip holding her artificial purple bun tightly in place. It was the perfect hairstyle for the occasion, she had to hand it to herself: the perfect cohesion between rebellious and businesslike. Workable and non-conformist.

Reporters from pretty much every terrestrial channel had finally arrived. It had taken long enough. Wars wouldn't be won without armies, and armies couldn't be recruited without the fickle beckoning hand of the media.

She was about to continue, but she closed her mouth instead and rode the waves of mass hysteria from the crowd for a few more seconds. That was probably as good a place as any to stop, actually, so she took a deep breath and smiled triumphantly. This wordless gesture of satisfaction ushered forth more cheers. For a second she felt her head swim with the reality of this occasion, but she righted herself quickly. It was important to balance humility with entitlement in this world she had helped create.

Stepping down from the podium, she was set upon by the reporters long before die-hard fans or hate-filled enemies could get near her.

"… Channel … News," one female reporter yelled to her over the chanting of the crowd. Raksha would normally have ignored her, but she was struck momentarily by her manner. This reporter was short, with sharp, harsh features almost needlessly accentuated by subtle makeup. Her almond eyes were catlike and fierce, and her cameraman was shaking. The shot would be amateur-looking, and the reporter would play hardball, judging by the look she was giving. News stations would gobble it up; she would bet it wouldn't just end up on Channel whatever-she-had-said.

"Yeah, you got anywhere private to go?" Raksha yelled back, suppressing the urge to outwardly acknowledge that she was very familiar with that phrase, but not in this situation.

The reporter grabbed her wrist a little too tightly, and Raksha was pulled away from the chaos that she had created so quickly that her colourfully dyed hair slipped from its crocodile clip and streamed behind her. She reached to grab it as it clicked to the floor, but she was being pulled too hard and there was a crunching snap as someone stepped on it with thick boots.

Before she knew it, a van door was slid shut with a boom and a camera was in her face.

"Raksha. Is that your real name?" the reporter asked, picking her teeth into a hand-mirror.

"Is that thing rolling?"

"Honey it's always rolling. You never know when the moneymaking shot will dive in front of your nose."

The mirror was turned towards her, and for a moment she didn't know what was expected of her, until she realised that her hair was a state. She flattened it with her palms, looking up again for confirmation. The cameraman gave her an all-ok sign with his thumb and forefinger, while the reporter's nose twitched as if she had caught an interesting scent.

"For someone they're calling the queen of the rebel movement, you're actually pretty self-conscious?" she said. Her statement annoyingly rose up at the end in a pseudo-question.

"Have we started yet?"

"No. Starting in five," the cameraman confirmed, nodding to the reporter. "Four three two one."

She nodded back, and then an incredible transformation occurred. Her features melted like butter into something warm and beautiful. The harshness was hidden by the now even harsher lighting.

"Martina Casinova reporting for Channel 8," she said. "And here I have with me the girl of the hour, neck deep in her fifteen minutes of fame and known only by one name: Raksha, although some have taken to the more cryptic 'RJ'." The reporter turned to her. "Do you compare yourself to other one-named celebrities, do you think?"

"Um," Raksha said. All she could think about were the mixed metaphors she'd just spat at her audience. She turned to her fingers for help, but instead all she could spot was where her purple polish had flaked off. What did the movement need? She nodded, remembering why she had agreed to join in. The movement.

"That doesn't matter," she said. "A name's just a name. Whatever they call me is fine as long as they are in no two minds about what I represent."

"I think there are people out there who call you very different things from Raksha, sweetie, so don't worry!" The reporter laughed. It was an annoying one.

"Anyway," Raksha said pointedly, "my _fame_, as you call it, is going to last longer than fifteen minutes whether the people are behind it or not. Pokemon battling for pleasure is a product of evil. There is evidence that pokemon feel pain just as humans do, and to exploit them for our own personal gain, or to fight our own personal battles, is just repugnant and entitled. Humans came long after pokemon had been on this planet, and they deserve respect from us, even if it only goes so far as to stop forcing them to bloody each other at our every feeble whim."

"Mm hmm, mm hmm," Martina Casinova nodded. "And where do you get your hair coloured? Do you do it yourself?"

Raksha sank a few inches into her seat. There was a heavy silence, during which the reporter's face never faltered, but her eyes seemed to grow harsher and harsher against the pale backdrop of her face.

"… yeah, no," she said. "I would dye my hair myself, but it'd be messy."

A few minutes and as many questions later and she was back on the streets. They were hauntingly empty now in comparison to the masses that had been writhing and screaming just minutes earlier. All that was left was their trash and some signs. Raksha stepped over one.

It had the word 'Championships' on it in huge blood red letters. The last 'p' had been crudely crossed out and replaced by a 't'. Three exclamation marks had been added for good measure.

"_How does it feel to be the most powerful woman in the world right now?"_ Raksha asked herself under her breath, navigating around polystyrene cups. "_Are you finding it difficult to adjust to having so many adoring followers? Are you finding any truth in the rumours that you might be the next Brother Aras?_" She let out a humble chuckle. One that she had been practicing for several months. "Oh, that's silly," she answered herself. "I'm nowhere near as influential as that. Yet."

She sighed, and grumbled. That would be on the TV right now, or even earlier. It would show her with messy hair and wide eyes, talking about her beauty regime. What kind of self-respecting news station would grab _the _Raksha and quiz her about hair and makeup?

The woman was an idiot.

"I am the most powerful person in the world," she told herself almost silently. Affirmations calmed her, refocused her on what she hoped to achieve.

She cleared her throat and looked into a shop window, not at the mannequins, but at her reflection. "I am the most powerful person," she said again. There was a pause, and then she twisted her lips into a smile. "And, hey, maybe one day I'll even dye my own hair."

She didn't even have time to laugh before she felt, and watched, herself shrinking to the floor. By the time she could scream, she had lost her human vocal chords.

Instead what came out of her mouth, and what she could now see in the reflective glass, was 'Skitty!'

Behind her two cloaked men bowed deeply.

"Most powerful _pokemon_ in the world now, madam," one said in a gruff voice, and the two scuttled off, leaving her to black out promptly on the concrete beside a stack of newspapers, the headline of which screamed, 'WRATH OF RAKSHA UNSTOPPABLE?"


	4. Adam I

**Adam I**

"Can't find eggs this rare anywhere else this side of Kanto."

The tumbler caught the sunlight, and the whiskey inside it seemed to glow. If anyone in the world would have found this beautiful, they were not present inside this bar.

Adam was unsure whether he wanted to waste it on drowning out the hushed endorsements from the nearby salesman, but he tilted his head back and swallowed the last drops of the most expensive drink he'd ever bought. It burned his throat and he could feel it scorch the linings of his empty stomach.

"Shinies 40% guaranteed to hatch from all eggs you get from me."

The hitherto ignored salesman received his first reply for this claim.

"What does 40% guaranteed mean?" a man with a shining head and big bat ears shot over to the corner that the other man inhabited.

"It means that 40% of the time, whatever hatches is guaranteed to be a shiny," egg man responded in his commanding rasp. Adam waved the barman back over to refill his glass. He was regarded with uncertainty – he definitely didn't seem the type to have the funds for this habit – but ultimately his tumbler was filled again.

"Not the numbers," bat ears grunted, rubbing a finger against his mug, "how'd you get them to hatch shiny?"

"Trade secret, pal." Grimy finger tapped grimy nose conspiratorially. "My business is 100% legitimate."

"I'm not saying it's not, but-"

"Ask me how many complaints I've had."

"Mate, I just-"

"Go on. I've never had a single complaint."

The left corner of Adam's mouth tilted upwards, but his eyes didn't leave his drink. Behind the bar a small television set hummed softly to the tune of a disappearance. The subtitles were a few seconds behind the picture, so that when the picture of the boy flashed up on the screen – maybe eighteen; healthy, bright, confident-looking – the subtitles were still displaying a commentary on the wounding of prize show Rapidash, Miss Lava Tsunami, during a routine jumping exercise.

'… injury central to the hind legs, but her spirits remain sky-high …' ran the green text underneath the grinning mugshot, but Adam could guess at what the anchorwoman was really talking about.

The current champion of Aerei had gone missing that morning, entirely out of the blue. Adam chewed on the side of his cheek as he inspected the photograph. He doubted the sombre grief on the face of the newsreader would outlast her camera time.

"You there, pal, are you a trainer?"

It took several seconds of silence for him to realise that this question had in fact been directed at him. He cleared his throat and stared into the wide eyes of the egg man.

"Um."

"You have the look. I can spot 'em a mile off."

"Well-"

"My business is 100% legitimate, you know. Go ahead, take a look at this egg." He rummaged around in his greasy-looking satchel and drew out a smooth, tough pokemon egg. "I know some of the most powerful trainers in all of Aerei, y'know."

"Do you?" This comment raised Adam's eyebrow.

"Yep." The man jabbed a stumpy thumb at the television. "You know the Champion's Cyndaquil was actually one of my eggs originally."

A snort escaped Adam before he could stop himself.

"What?" The egg man's demeanour shifted much further into the realms of unpleasantness. "You got something to say, pal?"

Adam shook his head. "No."

But it was too late. The gauntlet had been thrown; he couldn't control the laughter in his eyes at this other man's expense. As mirror images, both had their dominant hand inch towards their belts without much thought. It was Adam who pulled his away first. He knew that he had to stop acknowledging the impulse, but a decade of enabling a habit created a pretty strong one.

"You look familiar." The barman cut through the silence, and Adam's head snapped towards him, and then back down to his glass. He downed the rest of his whiskey and smiled.

"I look like that guy from that cologne advert," Adam replied, voice still thick after the morning's events. He slung his backpack over his shoulder, pulled his cap over his brow and hopped off the bar stool after throwing crumpled notes onto the counter. The movement had been almost too quick for him to register the almost comical widening of the eyes of the egg man. Recognition? Dammit.

Tripping out to the curb, Adam squinted into the sunlight and wondered when his eyes had become so sensitive.

"Hey!"

He ignored it, though his heart quickened.

"You forgot your change."

"Whoah, wasn't he the-"

He hadn't quite had the time to process the consequences of staying put before his legs had taken off from underneath him. Soon the city around him was a bubble of sidestepping citizens and stomach-churning trash underfoot. He'd never understood fully the term that one's head could be spinning until then. It took several minutes before he had finally resisted the urge to list to one side and had managed to run straight out of the borders and back to the comforting hiss of the woods.

He bent double against a tree, clutching a stomach morphed by lavish meals into something unrecognisable to him, and tried to resist losing the most expensive drink he'd ever bought.

"First time being drunk, is it, pal?"

Adam wheeled around and had to catch himself from going a full 360 by slapping a palm against cool bark again. Impossible. How had the horrible man beaten him out here? There he was: hands shoved in brown pockets, greasy satchel spilled like melting chocolate on the grass. His face was a fair few shades worse in the natural light.

"I'd have thought the Champion of Aerei would be well-versed in the effects of alcohol by now."


End file.
